National Affairs: Wary Welcome

The delegates' lounge at U.N. headquarters at Lake Success, where
representatives of the world's sovereign nations
gather over Martinis or orange juice, was
a handy place for a casual meeting. There,
one day last February, the U.S.'s lanky
negotiator, Philip Jessup, fell into conversation with Russia's barrel-chested
Yakov Malik. From that conversation,
the U.S. learned last week, came the series
of talks which brought the first break in
the cold war in months: the Russians were
prepared to abandon the blockade of Berlin. The end of the Berlin airlift, a historic
employment of air power as a weapon of
diplomacy,...